


Space Cadets

by Geist



Category: Original Work
Genre: Astronauts, Blow Jobs, Cunnilingus, Doggy Style, Established Relationship, F/M, Fantasizing, Groping, Height Differences, Innuendo, Masturbation, Missionary Position, Romance, Science, Sex, Sexual Content, Sexual Frustration, Sexual Tension, Skintight Clothing, Spanking, Standing Sex, Tight Spaces, Training, Undressing, Vaginal Sex, exercise, scientists - Freeform, space, space suits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:01:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24605875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geist/pseuds/Geist
Summary: Dr. Julia Dover and her lab partner/boyfriend Dr. Adrian Fletcher have been shortlisted to work on a brand new space station. It's the career opportunity of a lifetime, but to get there they'll have to pass the interview, and then endure a grueling, weeks-long training session. In a tiny, cramped simulator module. Wearing very tight, clingy next-gen pressure suits. Where they're expected to be chaste and professional at all times. Can they possibly hold out?Thanks to the anonymous originator of this fic for the character and settings!
Relationships: Julia Dover/Adrian Fletcher, Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Space Cadets

**Author's Note:**

> All characters are portrayed as 18+

Julia, when she was nervous, had a tendency to clutch her left thumb in the opposite hand and drum her fingertips against her knuckles. She was doing it now, trying not to pace back and forth in front of the door to the boardroom. Bouncing on her heels instead. Adrian noticed.

"There's nothing to worry about," he said. "This is just a formality. Haven't they been telling us how much they love your proposal?"

Julia smiled at him. He radiated seriousness, in a way that was remarkably calming. Plus, when he dressed to impress, as he'd done today, he provided quite the distraction from Julia's anxieties. All businesslike, with a charcoal suit that accentuated his slender, solid body, the colour carefully selected to complement his long black hair, currently done up in a sleek half-ponytail.

She could ogle. He was her partner. Lab and romantic. Their personal and professional lives had intertwined in a deeply satisfactory way. Satisfactory enough that Julia's microbiological research had been lauded throughout the scientific community: in journals, at conferences, on popular science blogs. Enough that she and Adrian had been picked out for a signal honour.

In low Earth orbit, a brand new research space station was nearing completion. If all went well today, she and Adrian would be among the first civilian researchers to board, where they'd carry out experiments that Julia was certain would be Nobel Prize-worthy. If all went well today.

"Sure, but there's the medical checks," she said, "the psych eval - we'd be the first sanctioned couple ever to spend time together in space. These are aerospace administrators. They don't like to take risks."

"Former astronauts, most of them," Adrian rebutted. "They've willingly sat atop several tonnes of deeply unpleasant explosive propellant in order to launch themselves into an environment where everything wanted to kill them."

"You know what I mean. Avoidable risks."

"We've passed the medical and psych checks. And us being a couple is a bonus. They want to know how our dynamic will work. There's whole teams of psychologists salivating for the opportunity to write papers on the future of romance in space."

"And my hair is a mess," she said, running fingers through her frizzy red mane.

"That's the last thing they'll care about."

Julia finally cracked a smile. "I hate it when you're reasonable. Romance, huh. Think there'll be time for that?"

Whether Adrian thought so or not went unsaid, as the door opened and an aide poked his head out.

"They're all ready for you, Doctors," he said, and retreated back into the room.

Julia swallowed, reached out, squeezed Adrian's hand. "Let's do this."

The boardroom had the atmosphere of bland conference spaces everywhere, with a table of water jugs and light refreshments against one wall, magnolia walls and neutral grey carpeting. At the far end sat the selection board, behind desks hastily arranged in a semicircle, and Julia had instant flashbacks to her postgraduate days, defending her thesis against the talons of fearsome academics. The aide settled himself back down at a table off to the side and tapped at a laptop, presumably ready to act as the minutes taker.

"Ah, Dr. Dover, Dr. Fletcher," said the chairperson: a lanky woman with greying hair. She wore a business suit that suggested she didn't wear business suits very often. Julia warmed to her. A researcher, she assumed, called away for the bothersome business of administration.

"Esmeralda Ford," said this potential ally. "My colleagues," she added, nodding to the men to her left and right, "Drs. Emerson and Wei. We were very impressed with your proposal, Dr. Dover."

"Julia, please," she said, with a flush of pride. "And it really was a team effort. Adrian's just too modest to claim co-authorship."

"She's being modest," said Adrian. "She's the genius here. I'm really more suited to an assistant's role."

"A highly qualified assistant, by all accounts," said Ford, which Adrian acknowledged with a faint smile and a nod.

"We'll be going over your proposal today," Ford continued. "Just clearing up one or two details, and answering any questions you may have about the mission. Please, take a seat. This shouldn't take any longer than an hour or two."

With words of thanks, Julia and Adrian sat down in two of the chairs lined up in front of the desks, and steeled themselves for the interview that might define their careers.

It was far less intense than Julia had anticipated. The questions and answers flowed back and forth, but she was more than prepared to answer queries about bacterial and ameboid development in microgravity, the application of her research in space medicine, and even the cutting edge of her studies: the potential utility of biofilms as adaptable, self-healing materials. Adrian chipped in with questions about the microbiology lab being assembled aboard the station, at which Emerson's eyes lit up. It turned out he'd been in charge of the specifications, and he digressed about it at length, until Ford had to interrupt him and get them back on track.

All in all, a pleasant meeting of the minds. Julia was feeling almost relaxed until the last few moments, when Ford asked her and Adrian the question she'd been dreading.

"Now, we're aware that you're romantically involved. As far as we're concerned, that's a plus. One of this mission's parameters is to explore various social dynamics in space. The station is far more of a home and a workplace than previous ones have been. We may - emphasis on the may - be able to arrange some privacy for the two of you while you're up there." She smirked, slyly. "Though I am given to understand that the walls are thin and there's a lot of ductwork, so that's relative."

Ford resumed a serious expression, and leaned across the desk to fix them with her gaze. "However, during the five week training period, your lives will be an open book. Apart from the bathroom, you'll be monitored at all times. Do you think you can handle that? Because I'll tell you now that your behaviour during the simulation will have to be absolutely professional."

Julia opened her mouth to answer, but Adrian was ready way before her.

"Not a problem," he said. "When we're in the lab, we don't think of anything other than the work. It'll be exactly the same there."

"Alright then," said Ford. "I don't think we have anything else to say here. We should have finished all our evaluations by the end of the day; we'll let you know then."

Julia and Adrian stood, shook various hands and said their farewells, and exited back out into the lobby, which seemed bright and strange and full of potential.

"Wow," said Julia. "I think we might actually be in."

"Told you," said Adrian.

"One thing though."

"Mmm?"

"'We don't think of anything other than the work'? So when I was modelling those replication rates the other day and you came up behind me and grabbed my boobs, that was you working?"

"Just making sure you had adequate support," he said. As they left through the lobby's glass doors, he took a glance around and slipped his hand into the back pocket of her trousers. Julia didn't slap his hand away until he'd given her ample arse a good and thorough squeeze.

They found a restaurant for lunch, then having nothing better to do, took an accelerated sightseeing tour around Washington before they returned to their hotel room. Neither of them had particularly taken in much history, their attention being on their phones most of the time, ears attuned to the telltale ping of their email apps.

Julia had just gotten out of the shower, a fluffy white towel wrapped around her short, curvy frame, hair done up in a turban made of another, when her phone bleeped. She dived across the bed, nearly knocking Adrian down in her hurry, snatched it up from the nightstand and almost broke the thumbprint scanner, so hard did she slam her thumb against it. Her phone unlocked; she smacked the mail icon. There it was. Dr. E. Ford. Address that included a four letter acronym and a .gov. Finger shaking, heart throbbing in her throat, Julia opened it.

The mail was full of preludes and rambles, information and links to further information, but one word in particular stood out to Julia.

Congratulations.

She stared at it, dumbfounded for a second. She sat up slowly. Blinked. Then punched her fist in the air, sending her phone sailing up towards the ceiling before it came arcing back down to land safely on the sheets.

"YES!" she crowed. "FUCK FUCK FUCK YES!"

"What will the neighbours think," Adrian murmured, though he had an enormous grin stretched across his usually stoic face.

"WE'RE GOING TO FUCKING SPACE!"

Suddenly Adrian's arms were around her, his face pressed to hers, tongue hot in her mouth, and she was kissing him back, towel gradually loosening and sliding down her body.

"We did it," she gasped, when she was able. Tears were springing to her eyes. She was trembling with adrenaline.

"You did it," he said, clasping her cheeks, stroking stray coils of her unruly hair back into her towel turban.

"Babe," she said, with a note of exasperation. "You've got to take more credit. "You did half the work on that proposal. More, probably."

"Alright. I helped. A little."

Julia giggled. "Well, it's a start." She slid her hand down his shirt, into his crotch, where she found something big and solid tenting his pants. "This is a real turn on, huh?"

"Actually," Adrian said, glancing down, "That really is all you."

She followed his gaze, and found that her towel had abandoned its post, baring her magnificent tits, still pink and damp from the shower. She blushed.

"Oh. Well ahhhhh..."

Julia trailed off as Adrian cupped her boobs, hefting them in either hand, thumbs flicking expertly across her nipples.

"Oooh, that's nice."

She let him push her back, and she sprawled herself across the duvet. He covered her, reached under himself. She heard a zipper, the shuffling of fabric. Closing her eyes, biting her lip, she spread herself and awaited him.

They made the most of that night. They didn't expect to have any more like it for the foreseeable future.

***

A month passed in a blur of communication, travel, and arrangements, both domestic and professional. Someone had to look after Julia and Adrian's apartment. Plants needed watering. Postgrads who could be reasonably trusted to not ruin delicate long-term experiments had to be wrangled. A few other tests absolutely had to be finalised before they left if months of research weren't to be wasted, and Julia and Adrian pulled more than a few all-nighters to get done what needed to be done. It was exhausting, but the promise of what lay ahead kept them going. That, and the good-natured envy of their peers.

Said peers threw them a party, the evening before they were due to leave. There was wine, Julia remembered that much. Then she and Adrian had gone home one last time and attempted to do what they'd done a month previous, though neither of them was particularly capable.

They awoke groaning, washed, threw together what little they were bringing, gulped down breakfast and coffee and ibuprofen, rushed out the door, remembered they needed their stuff, rushed back in, rushed out, remembered they needed to lock the door, rushed back, locked up, rushed out, caught taxi. Serenity, for a half hour to the airport. Then security-tickets-boarding passes-bag check-panic. Aboard the plane. Serenity again. Cool water. Headaches evaporating. A general lightening of spirits.

The plane touched down in a place where the heat hazed off sticky black asphalt, stretched out across a desiccated ochre landscape of rocks and scrub. An air-conditioned shuttle conveyed them to an air-conditioned terminal. There, a man with a military bearing and a distinctly non-military outfit (save for a certain patch on the breast of his polo shirt) held a rectangle of cardboard with 'Dr. Dover' and 'Dr. Fletcher' magic-markered across it. He conveyed them to a sleek, powerful car, which, to Julia's immense relief, as they drove out into the desert, was also air-conditioned. And incorporated a minifridge stocked with ice cold water.

"Thought we'd give you folks the VIP treatment," said their driver: name of Leo, it transpired. He chuckled. "Y'all ain't gonna get much of that these next few weeks."

It was a long drive, and a boring one. Leo provided Julia and Adrian with some briefing packs. They covered the space station's specifications, including a rough layout, and Julia pored eagerly over the descriptions of the labs. The mission parameters followed. The station would be inaugurated in a blaze of scientific glory, crewed with researchers from across the world, experts in every applicable speciality, none of whom would have more than the basic training when it came to spacefaring. For the first time in history, the professional cosmonauts in orbit would be outnumbered by those who weren't. And it wouldn't just be a handful of people either. The station (name still to be determined) would be an actual, functioning, spaceborne community.

The whole idea would have given Julia a thrill, even if she wasn't a part of it. She read on, and found a diagram of the training facility to which they were headed. Details were sparse, but the simulator they'd be inhabiting looked like the station in miniature: a few plastic pods bolted together to serve as their 'modules'. She tried to suppress her excitement, and willed the road and the desert to roll by faster.

Dusk was settling in by the time they rolled up to a cyclone fenced compound. Big hangars of corrugated steel sat in the centre of the compound, their doors wide open. Even at this late hour they were fed with an endless stream of trucks, jeeps and ruggedised golf carts, ferrying materiel and personnel here and there. Julia and Adrian peered through the windows, trying to get a glimpse of their destination.

A serious security checkpoint crewed by serious guards impeded their progress. Leo rolled up to the booth, and a heavy steel barrier came down behind the car, trapping them between itself and the one ahead. Killing the engine, Leo unlocked the doors, and gestured for Julia and Adrian to climb out.

"Leo," said one of the guards, taking a glance at his ID and sweeping him with a detector wand.

"And you two must be Dr. Dover and Dr. Fletcher. If I could see your identification, please."

They'd received official IDs a couple of weeks back, and handed over the laminated cards. The guard took them, wanded them, then headed over to the security booth. Julia heard the sound of a printer, and a couple of minutes later the guard returned with passes on lanyards. He handed them over, along with their cards.

"Wear these at all times in the facility," he said, and Julia and Adrian dutifully strung them around their necks. "I guess once you're in the simulator it probably won't matter so much. Just ask the techs to keep them by for you when you leave."

"Thanks," said Julia. "Are we good to go?"

"All good, ma'am, sir. See you on the other side."

Leo clambered back into the driver's seat, and Julia and Adrian followed his lead. A buzzer sounded, and the barrier ahead of them rose up. Leo pulled forward, onto the warren of roads enmeshing the hangars, and navigated them to one emblazoned with a big red 'D'.

"Here's where I leave you, folks," he said, hopping out to open their doors and retrieve their bags from the trunk. Julia climbed out, took the stretch that she hadn't had a chance to when they'd stopped for security.

"Good ol' hangar D," Leo continued, "your happy home for the next five weeks. Jacinda Navarre is who you're looking for, one of our techs. She's been overseeing pretty much everything to do with the pods. She'll get you started. Should just be through that door there."

He pointed to a door inset in the hangar's steel wall, dwarfed by the main opening.

"Any trouble, just hammer on the intercom. Wouldn't advise heading through the big ones, y'know, traffic and security and all that. Anyway, been great driving you."

"Thank you, Leo," said Adrian, shaking his hand. Julia did the same. Leo casually saluted them, got back in the car and drove away.

"Let's go find our next tour guide, then," said Julia, shouldering her bag. She strode, as much as she could stride, towards the door. Adrian followed.

As it turned out, they didn't have to worry about being locked out at all. The moment they approached, a buzzer blared and the door swung out, revealing a copper-skinned woman wearing an orange hard hat and a hi-vis jacket. She seemed somewhat distracted.

"Drs. Dover and Fletcher?" she asked, and they nodded, said their hellos.

"Hi, Jacinda Navarre, hello, welcome." She swept her hat off her head and hung it on her belt, stepped back, beckoned them in. "Let's get you signed in, then we can get you over to the simulator and hopefully get you settled."

Julia and Adrian followed her into a grimy, industrial office, dominated by a battered desk and a whiteboard smeared with the ghosts of schedules past. From a teetering stack of papers she pulled a few forms and agreements. Julia and Adrian sat on rickety office chairs and wheeled themselves up to the desk, to sign what turned out to be boilerplate copies of things they'd gone over many times before.

"Right," Jacinda said. "If I can just see your security passes...yep, all good. Okay."

She took away their forms, ticked a few boxes, and locked them away in a drawer, presumably to be filed when someone had the time.

"Follow me."

She led them to the opposite end of the office, to another door. Swiping her ID across a scanner to the side, she shouldered it open. They were greeted by the noise of heavy machinery and clanging tools. Julia gazed around, fascinated by the activity going on in the huge steel space. The main attraction was the accretion of white plastic globules, about the height of the average two-storey house, sitting in the centre. Where one globe met another, bolts and rivets joined them, and here and there protruded the odd hatch or antenna, but otherwise it was smooth and round. A few workers scurried around its perimeter, checking things off on clipboards. Further down the hangar, another module much the same as this one was under construction. A crane whirred as it lowered a globe into place, guided by a landing light-waving technician, while others stood by with rivet guns ready to fix it in place.

"Your new apartment," Jacinda called over the din. "Kind of ugly if you ask me, and I helped build it. I'm told the actual station is a lot more elegant."

Julia, however, with her microbiology-influenced aesthetics, rather appreciated the ameboid look, and said so. She was sure she caught a smile of professional pride on Jacinda's face.

"Well, either way, you won't be looking at the outside much. What we've got in there is a good representation of how the station'll be. That's the bit I'm pleased with. All 2001, save for the murderous AI, you'll be glad to hear."

They came to a halt, outside the bubble facing the hangar's main door. An ovoid hatch with an inset handle was, Julia presumed, the entrance. A scattering of desks surrounded it, somewhat tidier than the one in the reception room. Laptops, stationery, and the odd scrap of paper lay atop them. Plus, somewhat incongruously, an airport bag check-style weighing scale.

"Bags on the scales, please," Jacinda said, "and then I'll need to inspect them."

Julia and Adrian complied, one after the other. Jacinda noted down the weights, nodded, then opened up their bags and riffled through them. They'd thoroughly read the briefings on what they could and couldn't bring, and had restricted themselves to e-readers and a few zero-G-safe snacks.

"Good," said Jacinda, with a grin, once she'd bagged everything back up. "You're not going to be breaking the station with this, or overloading the launch vehicle. Hope all our civvie astronauts are the same as you two. Normally we'd get this all wrapped and stowed, but given that you're just going through that door...might be taking things a little too far."

"We're actually going in tonight?" Adrian asked. "I assumed we'd be assigned rooms somewhere then start in the morning."

"Yeah, well, that was almost the original plan," Jacinda said. "Get you here, go through briefing and outfitting, let you sleep in a proper room tonight then get you in early tomorrow. Then someone in charge of budget found you a flight that was much cheaper than the red-eye we wanted you to get. So if it seems like all this is moving kinda fast, that's because it is. We need you in there ready to start training right away."

"That's fine," said Julia. She winked at Adrian. "It's probably a good thing we didn't get the early flight anyway."

"Celebrating?" Jacinda asked, and smirked at their guilty nods. "Just wait until you actually launch, then you'll know the meaning of hangovers. Got some Russian guys on the roster, and - I digress. Let's get you suited up."

She logged a few last details in the computer, then went to the habitat's door and twisted the handle. The mechanism made a heavy electromagnetic thunk, and the hatch swung open slowly. Julia and Adrian eagerly peered inside.

The inside was something of an anticlimax. It was sparse and white, with a table bolted to the floor, upon which lay two shrink wrapped packages. A mirror, which Julia was certain wouldn't be present in the actual thing, sat flush with one wall.

"Here's your 'airlock'," Jacinda said. "I pushed to have a reproduction of the real thing included, but apparently if either of you have to do an EVA something's gone catastrophically wrong, so you'll just do some basic training on an older model after you've gone through all this. In the meantime, here's your dressing room. No cameras in here, you'll be pleased to know, so you'll have some privacy. Who's first?"

Julia raised her hand a fraction of a second before Adrian, eager to get her first taste of station life. Even if it was just changing clothes.

"Okay," said Jacinda. "You've read the briefing on the new pressure suits?"

"I have!" said Julia. "Fascinating design. I'm no anatomist, but the whole biomonitoring system is remarkable. I could suggest some things to improve it as a data-gathering device, at least from my perspective - maybe lab-on-a-chip patches that analyse skin biota-"

"But that's not your department," I'm assuming, said Adrian to Jacinda, recognising a classic Julia tangent.

"No," she said, "but I'm pretty sure the design department would appreciate your input. Ready?"

Julia nodded, and stepped into the habitat. The hatch clunked shut and sealed behind her. She took a breath. This air in this vestibule was a perfectly even temperature. It smelled of new plastic, which she guessed would change after she and Adrian had been breathing it for a few weeks and it had been through the recirculator however many times. For the moment, though, it was quite refreshing, especially after the desert heat and the diesel smell of the hangar.

Her suit, in its wrapping, was marked with her name, and, somewhat embarrassingly, her measurements. She tore open the shrinkwrap and shook it out. It didn't look all that impressive. Pale blue, crisscrossed with pressure bands and sub-fabric electronics, it looked like an undersized, wrinkled jumpsuit.

A sheet of instructions accompanied the suit. Julia had already familiarised herself with them, but she went over them again, following along. The suits' seals were electrostatic. Julia pinched a seam that ran down the front of hers, and it fell open at her touch, following her fingers. She unzipped it all the way, and laid it out on the table.

Now to actually get into it. For which she needed to be naked. Julia glanced around, in case Jacinda wasn't entirely right about her not being monitored. As far as she could tell, she was alone.

She crouched, unlaced her shoes and slid them off her feet. Socks followed, while she was down there, then she stood, popped the buttons on her jeans, unzipped the fly and wriggled them down off her hips. Given her general curvaceousness, this was sometimes a challenge, and she was relieved that she managed it reasonably quickly this time. She let them fall to her feet and stepped out of them.

Her blouse was next, unbuttoned and laid carefully on the table. With a sigh of trepidation, Julia reached behind herself and unfastened her bra, peeling away the cups. Her breasts sagged slightly as gravity took them, settling against her chest. She wondered how exactly it would feel to free the girls in a weightless environment. Bra joined blouse on the table.

The suits were, apparently, perfectly hygienic to wear with no underclothes at all, and would even provide the support that was usually given by a bra. Julia hoped that particular claim was true. She needed a lot of it. Regardless, it meant that her last vestige of modesty needed to go. She rolled her panties down her thighs, pulled them off and, picking up her jeans and socks, added them to the pile on the table.

Picking up the pressure suit, Julia turned it this way and that, trying to figure out how she was meant to squeeze into it. Legs went first, it seemed. She held it below her waist and slid her foot into one of the leg holes.

Her fears about the suit being too small were instantly allayed. Whatever advanced materials the thing was made out of stretched to accommodate her leg instantly, and she was able to glide into it as quickly as putting on a pair of pants. The other leg went in just as easily, her feet settling into the padded ends that served as boots. From there she was able to pull the suit up behind her and slide her arms into the sleeves. The gloves came separately, and attached at the wrists with the same kind of seal that ran up the middle of the suit.

All that left was to do up the central seam, which went from crotch to throat. It zipped up as easily as it had unzipped. The static forces bound it firmly, and it tingled under Julia's fingers.

As soon as she'd fastened it, the suit sprang to life. The collar puffed out, ready for a helmet to lock into in case of sudden depressurisation. The few wrinkles where the suit didn't quite fit vanished; the curving bands criss-crossing the fabric tightened and loosened as necessary, pulling at the polymer until it was completely form-fitting. And careful tension around her chest supported what needed to be supported, far more comfortably than Julia had expected.

In fact, the entire thing was more comfortable than she'd expected. She'd expected a pressure suit to exert pressure, but this one just felt like a second skin, albeit one stuffed full of clever technology. She guessed in an emergency it'd get tight enough to keep her vascular system from boiling. So she hoped.

Taking a glace in the mirror, Julia had to admit it flattered even her short, curvy self. Space exploration might finally have gotten fashionable.

The suit emitted two friendly beeps when it was done calibrating, and a telltale OLED patch on her wrist glowed green. Julia took a breath, and the suit seemed to breathe with her. She was ready for her public.

The hatch clunked open at a twist of the handle, and she stepped back out into the hangar, back into the clangour of construction and vehicles.

"Hey, not bad," Jacinda said. "Everything's okay? You can breathe?"

"It's great," Julia said, swinging her arms and lifting her feet in demonstration. "I think all the systems are online, too."

"We can but hope. Personally I'm not sure I'd trust my life to smart tech, but at least the code's by the same guys who program the launch computers, so it should be solid. Let's see if I can hook into the telemetry..."

Jacinda turned to her computer and tapped a few keys. "Hmm. Looks good to me. Heart rate, skin galvanism, good, good. Alright." She turned to Adrian. "Your turn."

"Adrian?" Julia said. He was watching her, a vacant, dreamy look on his face.

"Huh?" he said? "Oh, yeah. Very uh, nice. Spacey."

"That's not all that's spacey," Julia murmured. "So? Your turn?"

"Right, right."

He seemed to rouse himself, and headed into the airlock, disappearing behind the hatch. Julia and Jacinda waited in awkward silence while he changed.

When he returned, Julia got an idea of what had him so distracted. His suit clung to his long, lean, solid body: the pale pressure lines seeming to delineate areas of particular interest to her, the powder blue colour a lovely complement and contrast to his eyes and hair, respectively.

"Not bad," Jacinda reiterated, and it seemed there was a different inflection in her voice than when she'd said it about Julia. Julia had to agree.

Jacinda checked her computer again, confirming that Adrian's suit was working the same as Julia's.

"Okay," she said. "We're all good. You can head on inside, get yourself acquainted with the place. You should be able to find where things are easily enough. Mission control will wake you up tomorrow morning and get you started."

"Thanks," said Julia. "Ready, Ade?"

"As I'll ever be. Thanks, Jacinda."

"No problem. Think of me when you're in space."

Julia and Adrian stepped into the airlock, one after the other, and shut the hatch behind them. A light above the door at the other end turned green.

"Green for go," Adrian murmured.

"Glad we could figure that one out," Julia said.

"We are such good scientists. After you."

Skirting round the table, Julia approached the far hatch, took hold of the handle. She took a deep breath, pulled and twisted. With a familiar thunk, it swung open. She went through, and marvelled.

"Wow! You've got to see this."

Adrian came in after her, gazing around.

"Nice," he said. "Looks like they got actual designers working on this."

"Let's just hope there's some function under the form."

The 'space station' was as glossily white as its exterior, enlivened here and there with splashes of colour that looked like they served a practical purpose too. The blue lines running along just below the ceiling identified oxygen feeds, periodically marked with 'O2’. Yellow lines about half a foot off the ground suggested electricity. And at average eye height - so considerably higher than Julia - there were arrowed indicators pointing through various hatches to the lab, quarters, control...

A table had been installed in the centre of this room, surrounded by chairs equipped with lap harnesses, and compact cupboards sat against one wall. This seemed to be the galley: a homely place for astronauts who'd just been out on EVAs to return to after staring into the gulf of space. And speaking of, little LCD 'portholes' in the walls showed, on one side, a dark starfield, and on the other, the rotating blue curve of Earth.

"Clever touch," Adrian said. "I guess we're real spacefarers now."

Julia went to one of the cupboards, opened it, and found it full of silvery pouches. "Oh, cool. They've got those astronaut Capri Suns. Apple juice, orange...here."

She tossed one to Adrian. He caught it, but looked skeptical. "Are you sure?" he said. "We do have to make these last five weeks."

"Well I for one am thirsty. And we should toast this moment."

"Hmm. Alright." There was a black plastic bubble of a camera in one corner. He glanced at it, and said: "Hey, if you're watching already, and we're not supposed to do this...not my idea. Fire her, I should still go to space."

"It's your constant, devoted support that I love about you. Cheers! To space!"

"To space."

They knocked their pouches together, to a merry crinkling of foil, and drank down that which, Julia ruefully observed, she supposed she'd have to get used to drinking.

They left their bags on the table, and went to explore the rest of the habitat. The ladder up to the control room was nearby, so they ascended that first and entered a cavern of mostly decorative screens, switches and blinking lights. They'd train on emergency procedures here, Julia assumed, and aboard the actual station would be allowed nowhere near the important bits on pain of being asked to go outside for a breath of fresh air.

Back down the ladder, they followed the arrows to the gym, and found a module well stocked with exercise bikes and resistance trainers: all the things they'd need to keep their bones and muscles from withering in zero-G conditions. Under Earth's gravity, Julia suspected she'd be working out much harder than she was used to. They moved on.

The lab was a real treat. Julia had expected the bare bones, but here was everything they needed to investigate a few avenues she was pondering, and even to continue some of her existing research. She'd sent off some samples a few weeks back, and lo and behold, here were her carefully modified amoeba cultures, tucked away in a compact refrigerator, snug in their cultivation media in neatly labelled petri dishes. Hopefully still alive, when she got them out and got them under the microscope.

Julia and Adrian spent a good half hour poking around the lab before they moved on. The bathroom was as they expected, though, Julia was disappointed to discover, without the vacuum-flushing toilet. She guessed they'd be trained on that vital piece of equipment elsewhere. With relief, she noted that there wasn't any monitoring equipment in here, at least. There was a shower cubicle sans the shower, equipped with dry shampoo, absorbent towels, pouches of water to squeeze onto the towels in order to give oneself a cosmonaut's spongebath. In addition, though, there was what Julia and Adrian discovered to be a waterless washing machine, designed to clean out their suits with vibrations and ultraviolet.

"Bit by bit, space is getting less gross," Julia observed.

"Speaking of, I wonder how long the actual station will stay this clean?" Adrian added, swiping his finger across a smooth plastic wall.

"Yeah. Floating sweat, dander...the ISS ain't pretty. Hmm, maybe it'd be possible to engineer some sort of debris-eating agent. Slap a sample on the walls, let it go to work."

"Nice until it mutates and decides it likes the taste of plastics," said Adrian, keeping her grounded as usual. Julia smiled and wondered if he'd find it so easy when her feet literally did not touch the floor.

That left the store room, full of neatly packed boxes with, Adrian was happy to discover, far more ration pouches than they could possibly consume in a week, plus everything else they needed to keep their miniature station going. After that, their quarters.

They had a porthole of their own, with a shutter to cover it in case the earthlight interfered with their sleep. Webbing covered the walls to hold personal items, and plastic bunks folded out to serve as their beds. These were equipped with harnesses, to keep them from floating out, though thankfully someone had realised that the simulation would require mattresses and pillows too, and had provided thick foam ones.

"I call top bunk!" Julia said, and scrambled up a nearby ladder, throwing herself into her berth.

"Professional," said Adrian, settling himself on the lower one.

She peered over the edge at him, upside down, her hair falling into her eyes. "Hey, we've got to have some fun. We'll go crazy if we don't."

He smiled up at her. "Well. True." He yawned, and stretched. "I know what I need."

"Yeah, me too." His yawn infected her. "So, we just sleep in the suits?"

"I guess."

Adrian stood up, padded over to the porthole and closed the shutter, dropping them into semi-darkness, lit by the pinprick LEDs of various indicators. Hearing the bunk below creak, Julia stretched herself out on her rack and fiddled with the harness.

"How the hell does this - ah, got it. She clicked the various buckles into place and laid her head down on the pillow. "See you in the morning, space cowboy," she murmured.

Adrian chuckled. "This is ground control to Major Jules, take your sleeping pills and put your head down now."

Julia snorted, trying not to laugh. "Shut up, I'll never go to sleep at this rate."

"You started it."

"Did not. Night."

"Night."

Then there was nothing but the hum of various systems, and Julia, despite her excitement and bewilderment, found that sleep did come.

For far shorter a time than she'd have liked. She jolted awake, panicked for a moment, then remembered where she was and why she was strapped down. Something was making noise. A voice that was smooth, calm, but above all, loud, emitted from some hidden speaker.

"Good morning, As-Yet-Unnamed-Orbital-Installation. This is Mission Control. It's oh-six-hundred station time, the solar wind is breezy, and we're currently cruising at a height of four-hundred and nine kilometres above the Australian outback, so g'day, mates."

There was a groan from below Julia's bunk, a clink of buckles, and Adrian sat up.

"And you've turned on the gravity generators?" he ventured.

"Installed specially for you," Mission Control replied, with amusement in their voice. "Welcome to day one of your training and acclimatisation program. Are you ready to begin?"

Julia supposed she was, begrudgingly. She clambered out of bed and listened to Mission Control take them through their daily routine.

Breakfast came first, variously squeezed and slurped out of various pouches, or eaten in the form of dehydrated, low residue blocks. Morning exercise next: half an hour of high intensity pedalling and flexing that left Julia puffing and sweating. Luckily, the washroom followed, strictly one person at a time, to scrub down and do whatever else might be necessary. Julia discovered, to her relief, that for the latter the pressure suits opened at the crotch and rear, and didn't have to be removed entirely.

The lab was their next destination. Mission Control talked Julia and Adrian through the equipment, most of which they were already familiar with, though there were some additional caveats regarding safety in such a closed system. Julia found the devices that would let her examine and manipulate her microbes without having them float off the petri dish and into the air supply particularly fascinating. They'd be allowed, Mission Control said, to spend most of their time on their own projects, interspersed with regular training sessions.

With that in mind, they were ordered up to the control bubble, where they were subject to what Mission Control called a brief induction, but was in fact a four hour ordeal of dizzying technical specs and a few goes at adjusting the controls of what would be the station's radio array. Julia managed to detonate the fuel cells and kill everyone aboard on her first try, but by the end of it she had the basics down. She could beam a frantic SOS earthwards, and was given the reassurance that there would, most likely, always be someone on the other end of the line to guide her through any emergency procedures.

Lunch, and some rec time, which Julia and Adrian spent going through the simulator's media and scientific library. After their time on the bridge, they settled for the former, switching off their brains for a while with a couple episodes of random sitcoms. They headed back to the lab afterwards, and spent the afternoon designing experiments for the next few weeks and exploring the computer systems.

Mission Control was true to their word, and left Julia and Adrian undisturbed until it was time for another late afternoon exercise session, plus another wash. Aching, and not particularly convinced that the 'shower' was getting her as clean as it could, Julia returned to the lab with Adrian, and there they carried on until hunger drove them back to the galley. At Mission Control's advising, they called it a night, returned to their bunkroom, and spent the rest of the evening watching more TV, reading, and discussing the day together. After a chaste kiss goodnight, Julia clambered into her bunk and, exhausted, fell straight asleep.

And so it went. They fell into the routine, the only variations being their training sessions. Julia and Adrian were drilled mercilessly in emergency responses, taught how to mount helmets to their suits, hook up reserve oxygen tanks and activate the pressure mode. The sensation of the suit clamping down around her wasn't as uncomfortable as Julia had feared.

Once they'd learnt how to save their own skins, they practiced rescue procedures on each other, and sometimes on the dummies they found tucked away in the store room. Mission Control instructed them in basic station maintenance, isolation procedures and system repair. Far too often for Julia's liking, something started blaring or beeping in the control room and they had to hurry away to flip this switch or turn that valve. The real systems were far more automated, Mission Control told them, but it was best that they knew how to function under the worst case scenarios. Privately, Julia thought of far worse scenarios that could occur aboard an orbiting tin can than a few blinking LEDs.

Still, the time passed. They got used to the food. Julia found herself rather pleased at the effects two mandatory exercise sessions a day had on her. She continued to enjoy Adrian's company, found some fun things to watch on the TV in their bunkroom, and didn't end up writing endless research papers with the thesis of 'All Work and No Play...'. And, for that matter, their lab work produced usable data that kept Julia and Adrian forging ahead, searching for new discoveries. Maslow's hierarchy was mostly fulfilled.

The only real problem they had was each other. Not an excess of each other, as she'd worried about, but a lack. Julia liked to think of herself as a creature of intellect, capable of overriding her instincts and focusing on lofty, long-term, rarefied goals. In truth, she sometimes was. Adrian would gladly remind her of the times she'd forgone food or sleep in pursuit of her research, and had to be coaxed to the refectory or back to their apartment by him.

And yes, sometimes when they were really focussed on something they could go without sex indefinitely, bonding through the thrill of discovery rather than plain old oxytocin. She believed that sex was a luxury, not a necessity.

But now she'd been told she couldn't have it. The simulator was a tight, enclosed space, which despite the efforts of the air recirculators and their own diligent washing, was starting to smell distinctly human. She had to squeeze past Adrian multiple times a day, hands brushing - sometimes not so accidentally - his back or his hip or his butt. He did the same, and seemed to go out of his way to stand right behind her while she worked on something, not touching, but so close. A few more days, and she became sensitive to the breath whispering out of his nostrils, imperceptibly ruffling her hair.

He just looked so damn good in that suit. He had always been solid, and more inclined to fitness than her, but the exercise regimen made it even more obvious. She loved the way it clung to his slim hips, tantalisingly outlined his crotch, hinted at the tone of his stomach. She imagined she could see the flex of his long, lean calves and biceps under the polymer.

Julia supposed she was the same. She remained soft and curvy, keeping inputs balanced with outputs on a steady diet of high-protein space food and the little treats she'd brought aboard, but the muscle she was building under the softness gave her a sleekness and definition that Adrian definitely appreciated. A couple of times now she'd asked him a question, got a 'hmm?' in response and turned round to see him gazing absently at her. He tended to blush and turn away to some procedure that urgently needed tending to.

By the time they were halfway through their training, things had gotten much worse. It was almost torture for Julia to cuddle up with Adrian and watch something of an evening. A peck on the lips goodnight brought a flush to her skin, made her heart race and had her laying sleepless in her bunk for a good half hour, imagining what might have happened if that kiss might have lasted a moment longer.

His hand in her hair, the other on her breast, unsealing her suit to sneak inside, fingers pressing into flesh that burned. He'd crouch, sliding his hand down her stomach, between her legs, and she'd whimper and cling to him, steadying herself as he slipped those long, dextrous fingers into her. Then he'd kneel entirely, unzip her suit as far as it'd go, lean in and...

Julia tormented herself with that particularly fantasy for a good few days. After that she had the one where she hopped up onto the table in the galley, stripped for him, then laid back with her legs dangling off the edge and let him do with her as he wanted. Or the one where she sat beneath the desk while he typed up a lab report, his cock in her mouth, keeping him constantly hard until he told her he'd finished and she rewarded him by bringing him off and gulping down his cum. Tinged with a little homesickness, she had one where they were simply in their own bed, happy, cozy and in love. Then they fucked until they were sore.

Thought led to action. By week three they were flirting in constant whispers, dropping innuendo wherever they could.

"Need some help?" Julia murmured to Adrian as he went for his morning wash.

"I didn't," he muttered to her on his way out. "How about you?"

"I think I can reach all the tricky spots."

"Pity."

A valve on a complex part of the oxygen system was giving them trouble, one training exercise.

"Looks a bit tight," Adrian commented. "I'll get the lube. Really grease it up."

Julia had to bite her finger to keep from breaking into hysterical giggles.

"Take a look at this," Adrian said, one afternoon in the lab. He was peering through a microscope at a bacterial culture. "I think there's something wrong with the medium. No motility in these. They look very flaccid."

"Hmm." Julia squinted through the eyepiece. "Maybe give them a prod? See if you can get a reaction?"

He stifled a snort. "You do it. You're good at prodding things to make them err, react."

They learned where the cameras' blindspots were, and kept on pushing the envelope, almost daring mission control to reprimand them. Julia took to running her tongue around the nozzles of her meal and drinks pouches, making sure Adrian could see, and she somehow ended up getting a lot of food on her fingers, which she'd slowly suck clean. Adrian, for his part, seemed to slurp far more noisily at his meals than he usually did.

During their exercise periods, they'd help each other with stretches, and her hand would creep up his thigh while she held him in position. When he got behind her, holding her arms out, she felt his erection pressing against her lower back. Butt grabs in the lab became commonplace: a quick squeeze, a pinch, the lightest and most silent of slaps. Jammed together in a conduit, trying to fix a system that they were assured would kill them if it failed, Julia reached down between them for a dropped screwdriver, found his crotch instead and rubbed until he was gasping.

There came their most daring escapade, where in the store room, hidden behind a stack of boxes, they indulged in a deep, breath-sucking kiss, him leaning down, her on her tiptoes. He cupped her breast, hefting it within her suit, and she squeezed his arse and felt his cock harden against her. His thumb flicked over her nipple, making it stand out even through her suit's thick polymer, and she almost cried with the pleasure of it. She hoped beyond hope that the sensors wouldn't pick up the blip in her heart-rate, the sudden rise in her temperature, or the increased conductivity of her skin, and if they did, that they'd be just written off as an unexplained anomaly. Parting from Adrian was almost physically painful.

Mission Control, at least, made no comment, but Julia and Adrian decided after that they couldn't take another risk like it. Not because they didn't think they couldn't get away with it again, but because the temptation to go a little further was far too great.

Twenty-six days in, Julia broke. She was taking her evening wash, and had come so close that day to grabbing Adrian, dragging him down to the floor, unseaming his suit and dragging out his cock for her to ride. Naked, free of the surveillance of the cameras and the spies in her suit, Julia caught sight of herself in the mirror. As if she was watching someone else do it, she let her hands wander to her tits, pawing at them, lifting them, letting them drop and bounce. She squeezed her nipples until they popped out from between her knuckles, red and rosy, beautifully stiff, their areolae puffy with her arousal.

Playing with herself, wishing it was Adrian clasping her boobs from behind, she squeezed her thighs together and rubbed until a thin trickle of wetness escaped her lips and rolled down her legs. She let the friction and the heat build until she could stand no more, dropped a hand to her crotch and thrust a finger between her folds.

The explosion of sensation was dizzying, and she realised how starved she'd been. She almost came instantly, holding herself at the edge, panting. Gradually, she got control of herself, and was able to slide her fingertip up and down her dew-slick slit. She gathered her moisture on her finger until, with no fanfare or restraint, she shoved it into herself, straight up to her palm. Just that nearly had her legs folding up under her, and she had to clamp her jaw shut tight to keep from shrieking. Her walls pulsed around the intruder, almost sucking at it, blazing hot in her need.

Very carefully, Julia turned to the wall of the 'shower' cubicle and bent over, flattening her free hand against the smooth surface. She curled the other over her mound, drove two fingers into her hole and furiously pumped them back and forth, flicking out flecks of her juices across her thighs and the floor. The heat rose in her, the tension; she leaned further forward, resting on her forearm, the coolness of the wall against her flushed, sweaty brow.

She imagined Adrian walking in the door unlocked. Wordlessly, he'd unseal his suit around the crotch, pull out a cock hard, huge and throbbing, pent up with weeks of cum and frustration, and he'd take her, quickly and roughly. He wouldn't last, but then, neither would she. His cum would surge into her, her inner muscles would clasp his cock, refusing to let him go, letting it flood her until she was full and he was spent.

"Gnnnnhhh!" she groaned, biting down on her wrist. Her orgasm shook her, radiating out from her core in one great circular pulse, running down her trembling legs and up her torso. It evaporated through her head and grounded through her toes, leaving her floaty and lightheaded, as though she'd broken the bonds of gravity all by herself.

As quickly as she could, Julia cleaned up, wiping away what she'd dripped onto the floor, between her legs and under her armpits, hoping that would suffice. She chucked the towel in the trash, with a further prayer that whatever rubbish they produced during the training wouldn't be analysed, resuited herself and left the bathroom. Adrian looked at her a little oddly, and she was certain he suspected what she'd been doing in there. Likewise, when he took a little longer than usual, she had a pretty good idea of how he might have been using those few extra minutes.

A quick shlick sesh every couple of days let Julia focus for the last week and a bit, though she was still helplessly horny whenever she was around Adrian. She sublimated like crazy, taking out her need on the exercise bike every morning and afternoon, pedalling until the sweat dripped from her. In the lab, she focussed on her data and her samples with an intensity that could have burned holes in glass. Together, they resolved the last few simulated emergencies in record time, having buried themselves in the training manuals for hours, hoping that Mission Control would take that into account if they'd picked up on any of their slight misconduct.

And then, with a suddenness that was quite jarring, five weeks was up.

"Congratulations," Mission Control said. "We can't say anything right now about your results, but, well, the fact you're functioning at all right now is a very good sign that your psych evals were on the money. You might just have the Right Stuff, etc. etc."

"Thanks," Julia said. "This isn't the end of it, though, right?"

"Heck no. This is just the first phase. Anyway, we'll be disabling the surveillance now, so you can get some sleep. Debrief is at oh-eight-hundred hours. I suggest you make the most of the night. We’ll see you bright and early, now."

That smooth, urbane voice that had become the background to their lives definitely had a very knowing tone in it. The intercom clicked off. The lights on the cameras dimmed, and the green LED panels on the cuffs of their suits went dark. Julia felt unobserved for the first time in weeks.

"Bunkroom?" she suggested.

"Bunkroom," Adrian concurred.

They almost got stuck in the door together in their haste. Moving through the modules, they stumbled into their quarters, Adrian awkwardly craned over, Julia nearly climbing him as they tried to kiss on the move. As soon as they arrived, they peeled off their gloves, and she leapt at him. He caught her, swept her up, let her cling to and wriggle against him, flattening her tits against his chest. He supported her from below, sinking his fingers into the softness of her thighs.

Julia leaned in, lips parted, making them plump and moist with quick flicks of her tongue. Head tilted, she pressed her face to Adrian's, closed her eyes, melted into him. His mouth was softer and warmer than she ever remembered, his body more solid, his tongue far more mobile and hungry. They groaned into one another, desperate for each other in a way that mere closeness couldn't satisfy. Panting, Julia broke the kiss, and gazed into Adrian's gorgeous blue eyes.

"Put me down," she said, unwrapping her legs from his torso.

He acquiesced, and she rubbed herself against him like a cat, reaching for the neck of his suit. She found the top of the electrostatic seal, and performed what was by now a very familiar pinch and twist. His collar fell open, and she hooked her finger into the seam. Ever so slowly, drawing out her anticipation for as long as she could, she pulled it downwards, parting his suit in a wide V across his sleek chest.

He reciprocated, deftly popping her fastener, and opened her suit in time with his. She felt the pressure bands relax around her breasts; they settled under their own weight, threatening to spill from her suit, but just about held behind the lapels by the stiffness of her nipples and the stickiness of their sheen of sweat. When she stopped unzipping him, leaving his suit open to his navel, he did the same, and sent his hand darting in under her coverings, seizing one of her tits, rolling it beneath the polymer.

Julia gasped aloud, and slithered her hand round Adrian's hip, clasping his arse, kneading his firm, taut flesh through his suit. He flexed for her, and she chuckled, feeling his musculature move under her palm. Meanwhile, he kept up his massage of her chest, swishing his fingers across her nipple, and she whimpered as it stiffened for him. He pressed it back into its surroundings, let it pop out again, teasing her until she had to get things moving again.

Reluctantly relinquishing Adrian's rear, Julia went for his crotch instead. His cock bulged out through his suit, and even through the thick polymer she was able to distinguish its various features. She imagined she could feel it pulsing at her touch, and the thought of it had her sliding a hand between her own legs, pressing up, rewarding herself a surge of pleasure. He whined, his grip tightening on her breast, fingers twitching into its softness.

She didn't have to be satisfied with mere imagination, this time. She kneeled, and Adrian's hand slid from her suit, dragging her tit out with it, so that it hung bare and free, the other still just about constrained. Adrian looked a little disappointed, but that quickly changed when Julia flicked open the seam around his crotch and let his cock spring out, almost bopping her on the nose.

"Wow," she said, taking in its swollen, ruddy head, the deep blue veins pulsing along its shaft. "That looks, uh, full."

"Can you blame me?"

"Nope. I bet you don't last five seconds."

"Five? C'mon, give me some credit." Adrian grinned. "Ten at the least."

Julia smiled back. "Let's find out."

To a drawn out whimper from Adrian, she took a long lick up his shaft, base to tip, and lapped up the bead of precum she found there. The saltiness of it intoxicated her, and she abandoned all pretense of restraint, leaning eagerly in and slobbering all over his cock. She let it slide past her cheek, smearing her face in her saliva and another dab of precum. Cupping his balls, she pulled back, kissed his glans, swirled her tongue around it, making it gleam, then nuzzled the whole thing upwards, rubbing her face against its underside. She went down to his nuts, guided one into her mouth, sucked and tongued it until his sack turned soft and pliable, then left it dripping and gave the other the same treatment.

He was panting by the time she was done there, making little involuntary twitches of his hips, a string of precum dangling from his slit. She blew hot breath across his cockhead, giggling as the little gobbet swayed precariously in the gale, then darted in and engulfed him down to the ridge of his glans.

Adrian gave a moan that was almost a wail, and his hands alighted in Julia's hair, stroking as if to thank her, but it was quite clear what he wanted. She gave it to him, bobbing forwards, taking his prick into her mouth, her lips pursed around it, a vacuum seal as tight as any airlock. Never much of a deepthroatist, she stopped short with the tip at the back of her mouth, letting his cock rest on her tongue, slowly undulating it. She pulled back, dragging her lips along his length, then thrust back, squeezing his cock into the inside of her cheek, making it bulge out, giving him something slick and smooth to grind against.

He was groaning within a minute, dribbling a constant stream of precum across her tongue, but he wasn't nearly as quick to shoot his load as they'd predicted. Still, it was only three minutes, by Julia's count, before he was standing rigid with his fists clenched by his sides, his gasps harsh and desperate, his cock burning hot and jumping in her mouth. One last gulp, mouth suctioned around his shaft, tongue lashing like crazy, and Julia brought him off.

Adrian's low, drawn out scream was music to Julia's ears, his cum salty, slimy nectar. She let every drop gather in her mouth, then swallowed it straight down.

"Mwah." She pulled back from his cock, a thin stream of drool and leftover cum connecting her lips and his head.

"That tasty?" Adrian said, between gasps.

"You're flattering yourself. I just don't want any fluids getting in the electronics. We're still in zero-G, remember?"

"Clearly." He extended his hand, helped her up. "Then I should be able to do...this!"

Julia panicked for a moment as her legs went out from under her, before she realised that Adrian had swept her up in his arms. She shrieked, then giggled. "Hey, not fair. Put me down!"

"It's totally fair," Adrian said. "Zero-G, remember? You can pick me up just as easily as I can pick you up."

"No I can't, you still have inertia!"

"Oh, true. I guess I had better put you down, then."

He deposited her at the end of the lower bunk, legs off the edge, and kneeled.

"Now what're you-" Julia began, and finished with a "mmm!"

Adrian ran the backs of his fingers over her suit-encased pussy, pressing into the polymer, gliding upwards until he could crook his forefinger into her suit's seal. He peeled it open, down until the first wisp of her pubes came fluffing out, down until her rusty red bush was fully exposed, down until her dripping mess of a mound was spread bare before him.

Even from her angle, Julia could see how lewd she looked: her lips engorged, deeply pink at their edges, her clit an impudent little bump between them, erect and begging for attention. Adrian ghosted his fingers over her folds, and her stomach knotted. She fell back, chest fluttering, as he spread her, and she felt her juices dribble from her clenching hole, dripping down the crack of her arse.

Adrian leapt straight in: his tongue ravenous, his lips ravishing. He sucked at her petals, stretching them up and out, moving from one to the other before they'd even had a chance to settle back. When they were thoroughly slathered in his spit, he lapped straight up the middle, tongue furled, then flicking out, catching her pearl with its juice-slicked tip. Julia shrieked, arching up, gathering fistfuls of bedding in her hands as a blast of bliss ripped through her. A mini-orgasm, she was sure, a prelude of what was to come.

"Now who's a quickshot?" he asked, smirking up at her. She raised her head, peering over her tits, and stuck out her tongue at him. He took that as an instruction.

Julia rocked under his constant attention, keening, trying to hold herself at the edge of the bed, forcing herself to keep her legs open, so that every bit of her was accessible, so that Adrian could keep pouring pleasure into her. His tongue was everywhere, wriggling deep inside her quim one moment, dabbing delicately at her clit the next, delving under her lips to slurp up the sticky wetness accumulated there after that. He fastened his lips around her button, sucking it up, teasing it from its hood, leaving it achingly sensitive, primed for the touch that would destroy every last one of his defences. Fingers penetrated her, curled up, pressing into the spot that made her howl. Julia knew the module’s soundproofing was good, but she was worried that even that wouldn't keep her voice from leaking out into the hangar.

One last lick, and she no longer cared. A white light flashed across her vision, and for a moment, she was truly weightless. The gravity came crashing back down, far more of it than usual, and she screamed her lungs out, yowled until her throat was sore, cunt convulsing around Adrian's fingers. She thrashed against the bunk, the hinges creaking, and Adrian had to grab her ankles and hold her steady until her climax had passed. She came out of it shaking, her skin tingling, breathless and exhausted.

"Fuck, Ade," she said, gulping. "It's never been that good. Never."

"Ah, sorry to disappoint, those many, many other times," he said, with mock sorrow.

"Oh, you know what I mean."

He laughed. "I do. That was one hell of a blowjob you gave me, too."

Adrian clambered into the bunk with Julia, wrapping her in his arms. She snuggled into him, wriggling up so they were face to face. They joined in a kiss, losing themselves in each other for another little while. The bunk was entirely too small for both of them, but that just made sharing it even better, enforced their intimacy. Adrian's cock, stiff and solid again, rubbed against her leg. She broke their kiss, nestled her face into his neck, and kissing along his jawline, rolled her hips against him. Hopefully, she was effectively communicating her desires.

He seemed to get the picture. With a grumble that was half reluctant and half anticipatory, Adrian relinquished his grip on Julia, scooched to the side and let her flop onto her back, knees bent, thighs parted. He positioned himself over her, face to face. She gazed up at him, transfixed by those ocean eyes, his raven hair falling from his face in damp, glossy cascades.

"Gorgeous," he murmured, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. She murmured, rubbing against it.

"You're the most beautiful man I've ever known," she whispered back. "I'm so lucky."

"You're lucky? I'm going to space with the woman of my dreams."

"Mmm, and I'm going to space with the man of my dreams. Pretty lucky."

He smiled, dipped down for a quick kiss, tongue darting between her lips. "I think I know how we can both be luckier," he said, rising back up.

"I'm all ears. Or, you know, other body parts."

Adrian crawled up her, obscuring her view with his chest, bringing their loins level. Reaching back, he guided his cock to her pussy. His cockhead brushed between her lips, and her breath hitched in her throat. With tooth-grinding slowness, he angled his prick down, let it catch against her hole, held himself there for a moment. Then, with a gasp from him and a sweet squeal from her, he pushed into her, sinking millimetre by millimetre into her depths, stretching her walls wide open.

Julia threw her arms around his back, biting down on her lip, humming an extended 'mmmmmm' as his warmth seeped into her. So hot, so hard, and with nothing but her fingers to work out her twat the past five weeks, he felt impossibly big. Her flesh clung to him, skin-tight, rippling along his shaft, like she was merging with him completely. He bottomed out with a sigh, hips pressed to hers, and she buried her face in his chest, inhaling his scent.

They stayed still and tantric for a while, luxuriating in their closeness. Julia relearned the control she had over her pelvic muscles, clenching and unclenching: little flutters that sent currents of pleasure flowing through her, and that made Adrian whine every time she did it. At last, he could stand no more of her teasing, and drew back, still at that perfectly measured pace, and thrust again, barely seeming to move at all.

With their fierce, immediate desires sated, they were free to indulge in languid, gradual love, building their bonfire one stick at a time. Julia let her hands roam over Adrian's back, picking out his beautiful, newly defined muscles, while she kissed at his chest, dragging his suit further apart with her mouth. She exposed his nipples, and took one between her lips, swishing her tongue over it until it glistened in the half-light. Likewise, he groped beneath himself, balancing on one hand, and clumsily pulled her suit to the side, finally baring the breast that had, miraculously, stayed cooped up until now. He sunk his fingers into it, rolling it against her chest, and she groaned, arching up into his grasp.

Bit by bit, they stripped one another, exposing more skin, shiny with sweat, goose-pimpling as the conditioned air sucked away moisture and with, it, warmth. But there was always more, always the impetus to thrust faster, rut harder. Julia wriggled her arms out of her sleeves, tugged the collar of Adrian's suit down his shoulders, and he too freed his arms. Their suits hung off them like half-shed cocoons, swaying as they pushed themselves further.

Slow, loving sex could only take you so far, and one good cunt-licking wasn't enough to make up for five weeks of near-chastity. Julia felt her hunger return, and she lent it her voice, moaning for more. Adrian obliged, speeding his thrusts, and the sound of his hips slapping hers and her juices churning in her twat filled the confined space, a lewd counterpoint to their more musical squeals.

"Sooooo goood," Julia moaned. "Fuck me, Adie, I'm so close already."

"Me...too," he huffed, ducking down, craning his head to kiss her forehead. "Cum with me, Jules."

She wrapped her legs around his waist, adding her strength to his, each impact signified with a resounding clap and a burst of bliss. Grabbing his hand, unbalancing him for a second, she guided his hand to her tits, held it there, made him mold her breast beneath his fingers while his thrusts turned more and more uncontrolled. His breath became hot, his growls became squeals, and she screwed her eyes shut and joined him, utterly unrestrained.

"Gonna-" she whimpered.

"Yeah," he grunted back.

"Let's-"

But he fell across her, letting out a long "ahhhhhhh," and she released her grip on herself. An ephemeral nova bloomed inside her, radiating into her limbs, muffling her hearing and blurring her vision. Her cunt spasmed, gripping Adrian's prick, holding it firm while he painted her insides with his cum. She was certain she could feel every throbbing vein down his length, so tightly was she wrapped around him.

Ecstasy faded, and they fell apart, Adrian rolling off Julia, his detumescing cock slipping from her pussy. She laid beside him, listening to him pant, gulping down air with him. His seed drooled from her open hole, and she rested for a while and enjoyed the sensation of it draining from her until she remembered where she was. She sat up, grabbed a pack of wipes from the cargo webbing on the walls and cleaned herself off. Mission Control might suspect they were fucking, but she didn't want to prove it to them.

"Oh yeah, good idea," Adrian said, taking a wipe from her. Clean, he turned towards her, enveloped her in a hug. "So, did the Earth move for you?"

Julia glanced at their porthole. "Nope, still there."

"Clearly," he said, pulling her in closer and nibbling her ear, "we need to try again."

That meant her on her hands and knees: bestial, her neediness returning in full force. Her tits swayed beneath her as he slammed into her. After the transcendence of their initial reconnection, now there was the urge to let higher impulses drop away, to be nothing more than unusually clever apes driven by lust. Natural instinct overcame this deeply unnatural environment, and Julia howled, her body taking over.

She threw herself back against Adrian, impaling herself, his glorious cock driving into her depths, lips slackly gripped to it, smearing it with a fresh coating of her slick every time he dragged it back. He put every one of his recently strengthened sinews to use, screwing her so hard that it almost hurt, like he was burning her with his friction. His hand came crashing down on her arse, and she felt his palmprint flash red, outlined in broken capillaries and outraged nerves.

"Fuck, I love the way your ass jiggles," he growled.

"Yeah?" she gasped back. "Keep it jiggling then."

And so he did, with more spanks, harder thrusts, until he whined and fell across her, his weight and power driving her down. He snuffled at her sweaty hair, sent a hand creeping under her chest to lift and squeeze a tit, palm pressing her nipple back into the surrounding flesh. His hips rose and fell, his cock pumping constantly, each stroke a bolt of lightning, each one satisfying the deep, red urges that laid deep in her brain, under the thin veneer of what was called humanity. Their suits slipped off their hips and down their legs; they shed their technology, leaving them raw and primal. Her mind fogged, she let out a croaky scream, bucking against his last few movements, until she felt his cum fill her again.

They fell back into their embrace, kissing first, then rubbing and squeezing at whatever came to hand. Julia jerked Adrian's prick back into erection, then left him hard and wanting as she descended to his legs, where she stripped off his suit entirely and tossed it into a corner, heedless of however many thousands of dollars had gone into its making. On her way back, she licked his cock clean of her slickness and his semen, then continued on up and pressed her mouth to her lips. He accepted the kiss with absolutely no protest, driving his tongue into her mouth in his eagerness to taste himself and her, then sat her on the edge of the bunk and crouched beside her.

He peeled off her suit as she'd done for him, kissing each inch of thigh and calf he revealed. Her boots fell away, and he planted two more kisses on the arch of each foot. Rising up, he started to lap at her messy pussy, letting the blend of their fluids dribble over his chin, until Julia was whining and wriggling, her legs twitching of their own accord once more.

"Adriaaaaan," she begged.

"One more?" he suggested, and she nodded, urgently.

He stood, helped her to her feet, then picked her up and carried her to the wall. There, he pressed her back against it, while she latched onto him, with legs around his waist and arms around his neck, his hands cradling her arse. She wanted to kiss him again, but their respective heights made that impossible, so she satisfied herself with inflicting a row of hickeys across his chest. Adrian got the idea of what she wanted, and leaned down to kiss the top of her head, his lips ruffling her hair. She moaned into him, feeling his cock under her pussy.

Adrian let Julia drop, and her heart leapt into her mouth for the split second before he caught her. His cock speared her, jabbing her with a burst of heat and pleasure. Her sudden sharp scream tailed off into a moan as he launched into a smooth fuck: prick thrusting up over and again, jolting her on every stroke. Rubbing against the cargo netting, her back turned pleasantly warm and scratchy, and she knew she'd have some rug rash there tomorrow, a reminder of their passion.

The muscles in his arms trembling, his breath coming as harsh grunts, Adrian screwed Julia with every last bit of his strength. She cried into his chest, loving him for expending the effort to put her in this position she adored, loving his cock driving deep into her, wringing out every last bit of her pleasure. His fingers were flexing into her arse, slipping between her fat cheeks, sliding over her sweaty skin as he continually adjusted his grip on her. She aided him, tightening her legs around him, drawing him in until almost the entirety of his movements were inside her, thighs tight and hard against hers.

Adrian drove her against the wall, faster and faster, the thump of his impacts resounding around the room. His body was hot with his exertion, and a salty, metallic scent rose from him, mingling with the scent of their sex rising up between them. Julia's arms and legs ached; even after all her exercise, holding up a portion of her bodyweight for this long was tiring, but she grit her teeth and strengthened her grasp, letting the tightness in her core add to her stored up pleasure. She worked her pelvic muscles, too, keeping her cunt clenched like a fist round Adrian's dick, and the pressure of it had him growling as he struggled to thrust against her.

Not long now; her head was spinning, her heart thumping, her lungs struggling to draw breath. Her muscles were on fire, and Adrian's legs were trembling, his hands shifting constantly on her arse. His moans were high and clear, though, and she pressed herself to him, keening along with him as her bliss rose and broke. While she screamed, he slammed her against the wall a few last times, spurred by a sudden burst of orgasmic energy, then, holding her tight, his nails prickling her buttocks, he let the last few drops of his cum trickle into her.

Blearily, Julia felt Adrian pop his cock from her. She unwrapped her legs, and he carefully slid her down the wall, balancing her on unstable feet. She kept her arms around him, not trusting herself to stay upright under her own steam, and he slipped his own hands round her shoulders, cuddling her close. They shivered together, feeling the sweat cool between them, then, when they were reasonably recovered, they clasped hands and toddled bank to their bunk. Collapsing into it in sheer exhaustion, they wrapped themselves around one another, kissed, whispered their love.

"Do you think we'll be able to do that when we're weightless?" Julia asked.

"We'll be able to do so much more than just that," Adrian said. He ran his hand down her back, and she winced.

"Oof, that's a little raw."

"Sorry. Want me to get you some ointment?"

"Nah. It'll be fine. I just hope they won't do another medical exam tomorrow."

He smiled. "Tell them you slipped while you were washing."

"Hmm, yes, that'll look great on my evaluation. Clumsy: likely to injure self or others, not recommended for mission."

"You're catastrophising again."

"Hmm." She squirmed against him. "And here I should be all relaxed. Maybe another round?"

Adrian groaned. "I genuinely do not have it in me."

"No, me neither. I should clean up, though. Hand me another of those wipes?"

Julia took one from him, and set about getting herself as sanitary as she could in the confines of the bunk. When she was reasonably sure she wouldn't be staining the mattress, she cuddled back up to Adrian, kissed him, and let her eyes slip sleepily shut.

"I bet we'll be pioneers, though. World record for the most sex in space. Maybe we should chuck the microbiology and become cosmosexologists."

"I don't think they give Nobel prizes for that," Adrian said.

"Mmm. Well they should. Tell me what it'll be like, up there."

"Alright." He cradled her head, stroking her hair. "Imagine yourself naked-"

"Way ahead of you."

"-yes, alright, and weightless, floating, in air that's the perfect temperature. And I'll..." He yawned. "I'll be there with you, holding you. We'll..."

Julia listened to his increasingly slow and fragmented words, and pulled the covers over them both. She drifted, immersed in his halting tale, until his voice fell silent and his breathing became soft and regular. She nuzzled into the crook of his neck, held him close and let herself slip away. Lit by the gentle blue of simulated earthlight, she dreamed of the day when she'd be illuminated by the real thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to the anonymous benefactor who got this fic started, and thank you for reading. Follow me at the places below!
> 
> twitter.com/geistygeist  
> geistygeist.tumblr.com (I can't really think of a suitable elegy for this one)


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